“We will accept nothing less than full victory!” Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
I wrote this story on the 77th anniversary of D-Day. Today, it is easy to call someone a fascist, but those heroes on the beaches at Normandy fought and beat real fascists. They were a great generation of heroes.
I served in the US Navy flying against Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean targets. I cannot say there was anything heroic about it… and I’m glad the Cold war did not get pushed to an actual shooting war making it necessary for Americans to fight again against totalitarian regimes. However, that possibility is still out there.
I spent a lot of time flying over the Northern Pacific, Western Pacific, and Indian Oceans looking for Russian submarines and non-allied surface combatants. We found plenty. Back in the early and mid-80s, it was an adventure for P-3 aircrews to fly into Mogadishu, Somalia. We stayed in a large home rented by the Navy on the outskirts of the capital. We called it the Mog (long “O” sound rhymes with rogue) House. It was very Spartan. The furniture consisted of cots and chairs. Our crew got into Mog at least four times in early 1984. We would fly into the international airport. Um… hit the pause button… calling what’s now known as Aden Adde International Airport an “international airport” 40 years ago was somewhat deceptive. I saw very few commercial aircraft on the tarmac, and our P-3 was usually the only plane taxiing from the duty runway to transient parking. Not many people around and even fewer later in the day because the airport was closed at night… there was no airport ground lighting. Why? Airport maintenance crews would install lighting for the runway environment only to have the locals sneak onto the airport grounds at night to steal the wiring connecting the lights. The locals would sell the copper wiring for much needed cash.
So, the “exotic” allure of Mogadishu began to fade fairly quickly. I truly felt sorry for the Somali people. They were ruled by warlords who controlled the populace with armed force while they hoarded goods needed for everyday existence… like food. Real fascists.
Mogadishu was not a good liberty port. No real attractions and the local markets were places for native residents to buy or barter for essentials… no deals for tourists. There were very few places to eat, so we ate our meals at one of the restaurants recommended in our littoral site briefing guide. You dared not drink the water. The locals did, but they had developed immunities to the bacteria and other unseen life swimming in a glass of water. We off loaded American beer, sodas, and a small amount of bottled water that we carried to the Mog House. Yes, we carried beer on a US Navy aircraft, but we only imbibed on the ground after our flights were finished. You really don’t think about how much pleasure a glass of cool, clean water can bring to someone who is very thirsty and all they’ve had to drink is warm beer and soda. I’m not exaggerating the perils of drinking local water in Mogadishu. One of crewmembers rinsed his face with tap water being very careful not to get any water in his mouth. Fifteen minutes later, the skin that lined his eyes became puffy and red. His eyes did not swell shut, but we worried nonetheless… there was no Navy medical support in Somalia. In fact, the only Navy support personnel deployed to Mogadishu were an aviation mechanic and another enlisted person to help refuel out P-3. We were contemplating finding our way to a local hospital as we used some of our precious bottled water to flush the area surrounding his eyes. In another fifteen minutes, the puffiness and redness started to dissipate. An hour or so later, just some residual redness remained and that went away over the course of the afternoon. This episode gave new meaning to the phrase, “Don’t drink the water.”
Typically, we would land in Mogadishu after transiting 2,000 or so miles of open ocean. We were often tasked to spend a couple of hours en route to locate and update the position of a Russian warship. The next day, we would fly in a specific block of airspace off the African coast assigned by our operations center in Diego Garcia. Our crew would search for Russian submarines under the water, Russian naval combatants on top of the water, and pirate ships. What looked like small fishing vessels might have been pirate boats, but we could not be sure. We just logged and reported their position. When that mission was over, we would fly back to Mogadishu for the night. The following day we would fly back to Diego Garcia. Our trips to Mogadishu ordinarily meant spending a couple of nights in the Mog House. The Navy didn’t invest much time or money in Mogadishu in those days as American P-3s could operate on short fields and handle routine maintenance tasks without having to park the plane in a hangar for servicing. We could operate fairly independently. If there was a need for more assets or a stronger Navy presence off the Somali coast, the US could send the USS Kitty Hawk or USS Ranger to patrol the waters from the Arabian Sea down to Madagascar.
Sometimes our missions to Somalia would include stops in Kenya or Djibouti. On one such series of flights into and out of Somalia, our plane was diverted to Djibouti to pick up a young officer, about 24 years old, who had sustained a severe injury on board a Navy ship. Djibouti surgeons had operated on his knee in a Djibouti hospital. Our assignment was to pick up the patient after surgery and transport him to Diego Garcia where he would be transferred to an Air Force cargo plane and flown to a military hospital in the Philippines. That new mission included tasking to turn south and locate a Soviet warship before heading east to Diego Garcia.
We landed in Djibouti, and an ambulance rolls out to our aircraft. I’m guessing some State Department rep or maybe someone in the military outfitted in mufti boards ahead of the young officer. The rep advised us the patient was still sedated from the knee surgery and when he regains full consciousness, we should give him some medication. The rep handed me a bottle of pills. What?! We’re expected to fly thousands of miles over open ocean with an unconscious surgery patient who should still be in a recovery room? Yes. There are no US military hospitals anywhere in the Indian Ocean, so we are now a link in the chain of events to get this young Lieutenant JG (short for Junior Grade and the Navy rank equivalent to a Marine 1st Lieutenant) to an American military hospital.
The patient is carried on a stretcher and up the ladder… actually a set of retractable stairs that allow entry and egress for aircrew and passengers. Not this time… this passenger is out cold. Oh, yes… and make sure the glass jar catching the pinkish fluid draining from the surgical wound remains lower than the young officer’s knee. Goodbye.
Although the aircraft is equipped with two fold-down bunks, they are not used during takeoffs or landings as a safety precaution. The bulkhead (wall) next to the bunks could collapse in the event of a crash. However, we had no choice but to strap the patient into a bunk and launch. I checked on the Lieutenant JG shortly after takeoff… no change in his condition. That’s good… I think. I sat down at the pilot controls (a second pilot was flying while I checked on the JG) and my flight engineer turns to me and asks, “What do we do if the JG goes into cardiac arrest?” I thought about that question… looked outside at the ocean… and replied, “Didn’t you complete an EMT course?” He answered affirmatively. I told him if that happens, he could start CPR and we would bingo to the nearest airfield with any kind of medical support. If we’re over open ocean, then we’ll press on to Diego Garcia at our maximum airspeed. I added, “You are our 9-1-1.” Fortunately, none of that happened… not even close.
Remember that “Spartan” existence in Mogadishu? Well, we actually ate better on our 10-12 hour missions staged out of Mogadishu International than if we were on the ground. Our P-3 was loaded with huge ice chests in Diego Garcia to keep foodstuffs from perishing and some cuts of meat iced down. We prepped and cooked homestyle meals on the plane.
A couple of hours into the flight out of Djibouti, our radar operator starts sauteing some onions then frying up diced potatoes while scrambling a huge batch of eggs. It was about this time the JG wakes up and looks over at our crew’s “cook.” The radar operator says, “Good morning, sir. Would you like something to eat?” The JG… groggy and queasy… just shook his head. Our guy then held up a cold can of beer… “Maybe something to drink?” The JG just closed his eyes. I’d like to think he must have been asking himself… “Why didn’t I go into aviation? These guys have home cooked chow and beer.”
We didn’t find that “missing” Soviet ship. It could have been anywhere in a 50,000+ square mile area of open ocean. I didn’t want to spend one more minute than necessary looking for a ship with little strategic value on this particular day. I wanted to get to that Air Force transport flight waiting in Diego Garcia.
I was a Lieutenant without any command experience. However, if I had been tasked with that same mission later in my career… deliver a surgery patient after looking for an inconsequential surface target… I would have changed my orders and flown straight to Diego Garcia. Of course, I would not have done so without advising the operations center of the change in my flight plan. I’d let someone else try to cancel my flight plan and then only after receiving authority to cancel from my commanding officer. I know that sounds like tough talk decades later, but Navy officers are trained to make decisions and adapt to emerging conditions. In my view, the primary mission should have been to get that JG on a plane bound for a hospital. Nothing else mattered.
The flight was uneventful. No cardiac arrest. The JG was fully awake but the pain meds from surgery were wearing off. As I recall, the pills we received from the rep in Djibouti were most likely antibiotics. I landed and taxied off the duty runway then halted the aircraft. An ambulance was waiting for us on a nearby taxiway, and it started rolling toward us as soon as we were stopped. The JG was carried from the airplane, loaded into the ambulance, and spirited away in the direction of the Air Force plane (maybe a C-141). When we were cleared, I continued taxiing to our parking spot. By the time I shut down all four engines, the Air Force transport was starting its takeoff roll. Gosh, was that JG some senator’s son? It looked like either extra special treatment for a JG or maybe one of Air Force pilots had a date waiting for him in Manila. I guess things worked out for the JG… I never heard otherwise. No, it wasn’t “Saving Private Ryan,” but I’m glad our crew was able to help another service member in a time of need. I think Ike’s concept of “full victory” is made up of a lot of little victories along the way. On this day, my little victory was helping to get a very junior officer to a place that would allow him to start healing. That’s a victory in anyone’s book.
Copyright © 2025 by Ray Fowler
